Professor Q
Edits List for her: * take pictures * find coding * do the coding???? how idk * release to the public as the great and glorious Q Professor Quail Hondua. The brilliant scientist known all over Pyrrhia for her dreams of a brighter future and hundreds of ingenious, environmentally friendly new devices. But what most dragons don't know is that Q is not just a genius- she has mental abilities not seen in dragonkind before. Quail is a mutant. And she's a member of the superdragon group the Chasten. Appearance Mental Construct To most, Q is a rather noticeable AviWing. She is a shade of deep cream, her feathers rich and fluffy, although rather flat. She has a headcrest that is a gentle mahogany, mirrored in the stripe that runs from her throat to her tail, and her eyes are black, gleaming with unspoken intelligence. Her wings are noticeably small, but not much smaller than most AviWings'. They are cream as well, but fade to an oaken brown, speckled with faint spots. Her legs and arms are long, but not too long, tipped with ashen claws and often stained with ink- Quail has a penchant for fountain pens. A single golden ring is adorned on her left paw, a band of metal she does not speak about and no one mentions. Her tail is long and agile, snaking behind her and ending in her deep brown tail-barbs. The venom in them is practically useless, and extremely weak, so she never uses them- besides, she has no need to threaten anyone. However, the most noticeable thing of all about Professor Q is her wheelchair. Her hind legs are completely paralyzed, the result of a terrible fall she took years ago. She has the ordinary quadrupedal design, where she moves around by using her front arms, perched upon her metal contraption. Due to her small size, she has become adept at pushing back and sitting on the frame to write on a board or get something high up, although she is often still too short to reach and has to get a friend to get it for her. Clothing-wise, Quail takes great pride in what she wears. She has silk shirts, usually button-up, and often wears a tweed jacket over- she jokes about how much of an ‘intellectual' she is to her friends a lot when she does. Her pants are usually black, but she doesn't wear shoes most of the time, as it’s more comfortable and less hassle for her. However, what most don’t know is that the Quail they see around her university is not the real her- it is a mental construct, used by Q herself to resemble a more attractive her. True Form Underneath her mental manipulation, Quail is not beautiful, not in the least. Her feathers are the same cream, and her headcrest is the same deep brown, but her body is horribly malformed. Her hind legs, paralyzed still, are shorter than her forelegs, and when she walked she did so in a seesawing up-and-down manner. Her tail is thick and too long, and although still mobile, has a tendency to draw along behind her as she walks. Her wings are miniscule, far too small to lift her up in the air, and the right one is bent unnaturally in one area. The feathers are torn and brittle, and break easily. The same goes for the poof on her head. Scars cover her body- gashes from accidents and falls cause by her narcolepsy. A huge, healed-over gash is on her ribcage, hundreds of tiny nicks adorn her limbs, and there are three puckered scars, like the gills of a fish, on her neck. However, none is more horrifying than the large pink mark that runs from just underneath her eye and slices across the left side of her snout. Gained from the same fall that robbed her of her legs, this injury nearly blinded her, permanently leaving her delicate face deformed. Personality Professor Quail is clearly a very complicated individual. It is often said that there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and Q is definitely dancing on the cusp of that fine line. The very first thing anyone notices about her is that she is smart. Almost humblingly so. Quail radiates intelligence, it sparkles in her eyes and is carries in every movement she makes. Indeed, she is often ten steps ahead of everyone else around her, that extraordinary mind dancing above everyone else almost mockingly. Q is so smart that she can calculate the average mental process of another dragon and make a fairly accurate guess of how they would finish their sentences. She often answers the questions of others before they even ask her- which creeps many a student out. The general impression she leaves is that of a kindly dragoness, wise and eager to help, and spirited with the power of her amazing mind. And that much is true. Quail is a kind and sweet AviWing, who loves children and is devoted to her school and superdragon group. However, even with that, there is an air of superiority about her, as if she deliberately holds herself above the rest with her intelligence and incredible powers. Q goes much, much deeper than a sweet headmistress and professor. She is very, very ill- mentally and physically. She has schizophrenia, a born condition that occasionally wracks her with painful hallucinations and affects her mind to the point of shattering. Visions of grandeur are common among schizophrenics, and Quail is no exception. She has a very, very strong sense of vanity, and takes extreme pride in her appearance and the area around her. This is combined with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and very badly too. Q has to have her room in a specific way, or she gets major panic attacks. Everything must be in its place, or she will tidy it herself, zipping around the room in a frantic effort to reorganize her life. This has caused quite a stir with some of the sloppier members of The Chasten, and the violent Quail is not afraid to scream at them. However, one of the worst demons is narcolepsy. Q is a diagnosed narcoleptic, and has injured herself many, many times when she spontaneously falls unconscious. There is no cure, nor a safe way of keeping her. Students in her classes have often been listening to one of her lectures when she slumps over onto the floor, only to wake a few moments later. When she was younger, falling asleep would destroy the mental construct she placed in the heads of others, and the vain Quail developed quite a few complexes in fear of her true appearance being revealed. In fact, she was so scared of not appearing presentable that she learned how to maintain it even when she was sleeping, although the constructed parts of her body have a tendency to flicker and fade slightly. Along with her multiple mental illnesses, Professor Quail has many physical ones as well. Her bones have a deficiency of calcium, making them weak and easily snapped; she broke them many times as a dragonet. She also has a weak immune system, and asthma has plagued her for her whole life, although it has much improved in her recent years. All of these illnesses add up, and Q knows that her time on this earth will be very, very short. One day, she's going to fall, and she's not going to get up again. And late at night, when she drops her construct and climbs slowly into bed, she's completely and utterly terrified of that fate. Abilities Strengths As far as strengths go, one would not expect this fragile little dragoness to have many. Certainly, compared to the amazing physical capabilities of the rest of the Chasten, it would appear that she was unsuited to the task of protecting dragonkind. But appearances can be deceiving, and the little AviWing is not only a member but a powerful one at that. To sum up her power in four words is simple: Quail is a technopath. However, the true breadth of her power goes deeper than that. At the most basic of her abilities is the power to read electronic equipment. By reaching out with her mind, she can enter the inner workings of a computer and read it like a book. This ability comes in handy in a huge way, as she can easily draw on data from all over the world and retrieve information in a second. The Chasten often use this to plan out attacks or battles. Another skill she has is manipulation of computer data. Quail can hack a massive computer network using only her mind, and slip in completely unnoticed by authorities. She can also reconstruct data to read as something else, or completely destroy a system. Naturally, Q never needs to unlock her phone. At the highest level of her technopathic abilities, Quail can physically manipulate technology. Because she is not telekinetic, she cannot make a computer lift itself up in the air, or anything like that. She can only control it to the extent of its moving parts. This may seem unimpressive, but when given a battle robot with a sword, this skill suddenly becomes deadly. Q almost always carries a small robotic dog with her. Although it appears to be just a whim of this slightly eccentric AviWing, the robot hides a plethora of weapons in it that she can use to defend herself and others. Mental powers operate in strange ways, and somewhere along the line, Q gained an extra, strange ability. She can create mental constructs in another dragon's brain. The cause of this is still unknown, but Q hypothesizes that she is controlling flecks of metal and electricity inside the brain to stimulate a fake vision. Whatever the cause, she can make dragons see and hear things that are not really there. She mainly uses this skill on herself, because like all things, perfecting a construct takes time and effort. Her own glamour is one she has practiced for years and so appears almost perfect, but a new construct has a tendency to look malformed and odd. Weaknesses No dragon is completely strong, and this applies greatly to Quail. She may have strong powers, but her physical and mental weaknesses are more than a drawback- they are a liability. As explained above, Q has a huge array of physical disabilities, including her paraplegic status along with her asthma and narcolepsy. Over the years, her body has become so weak that she is, physically, almost entirely helpless. Should anyone threaten her alone, with a gun, she would almost certainly be doomed. This has come up in debates amongst the Chasten- and R. E. V. O. L. T.- many a time before, but her skills are currently too useful to let her go. Despite all of this, the more serious weakness is her mental state. Q is incredibly unstable, with many mental disorders. A plan has been put on the line more than once when Quail had a schizophrenia attack and succumbed to the hallucinations. Her narcolepsy is also an issue, but thankfully she does not generally stay asleep for more than a minute or two at a time. Sometimes, though, a minute is enough to make or break a mission. All of these are liabilities, and everyone knows it, especially Q herself. This worries her often, and recently, she's been spending more time in her laboratory, the only signs of life being the mechanical whirring and welding sounds. She's working on something to help down there, but no one truly knows what it is- yet. History Quail Hondua was born in Fellowship to well-off AviWing parents. Her mother and father were both entrepreneurs in the field of computer sciences and the Internet, and they loved their only daughter with all their hearts. However, from hatching Q showed alarming signs of weakness. She was diagnosed with athsma and brittle bones a few hours after birth, and spent a whole month and a half on life support before she was strong enough to be taken home. Thankfully, her parents had enough money to supply her with the care she needed. Shows of her incredible intellect started very early, the first being when she started to speak at a mere seven months old. Reportedly, the very first time she spoke, she told her doctor he had left his computer unlocked that day. The adults laughed it off as a childish joke by a dragonet, but in truth, Quail was beginning to explore her technopathy for the first time. More problems arise when she entered school. Not only was the little AviWing far too smart for her lessons, she started suffering from her narcolepsy. Her first big fall came about when she was on the bleachers, watching the PE class, when she fell asleep and broke her leg. She was swiftly examined by psychologists and neurologists, where they found out about many of her disorders, such as her schizophrenia and OCD along with her narcolepsy. Q breezed through grade school and entered high school at a mere eight years of age. She was isolated and sometimes ridiculed at school, due to being so freakishly neat and quiet. It got even worse when she had a schizophrenic attack in class and had to be taken to the hospital. Then, she had her first permanently damaging fall. She was making her way down a smallish flight of stairs when she suddenly fell asleep, tumbling down the steps and sustaining three large gashes on her neck, as well as twisting her wing. The vain Quail was horrified at her fresh deformities and, one day, stood in front of a mirror and manipulated her appearance. She couldn't believe it. She had always known that she was special, ever since she had once hacked into the school system by looking at it and could tell you the results of your search question with a flick into the datastream, but glamour? That was a skill she treasured. Most of her time in the hospital was spent changing her appearance, refining her mental construct. She went back to school a little more confident, and the dragons chattered about how she had somehow not gotten any scars, hidden underneath her mental manipulation. Then, for the first time, Quail fell in love. Her very first crush was a beautiful female SeaWing named Sheina, and the awkward Q had no idea what to do with her. She attempted, one day, to ask her out, with disastrous results. The truth quickly spread about her sexuality, and the abuse from her other students got worse and worse. The final straw, for both Quail and her parents, was when she had a hallucinatory attack and instead of helping, her classmates stood and laughed. Furious, her parents took her out, and Q spent the rest of high school in her home taking online courses. The years passed, and Q began to get restless. She eventually managed to convince her worried parents to let her attend college, at the most prestigious school in Fellowship, second only to the University of Pyrrhia. They seceded, and she gleefully went, certain of her intelligence and her secret powers. Q was right- college was a good idea. The dragons there were supportive and kind, and they helped her when she needed it. She loved the lessons, loved the teachers and, most of all, she loved one special AviWing. She was named Gail, and she was beautiful in Quail's eyes. She was tall, a russet shade of red and brown, speckled with black dots, and she was very kind. Gail wanted to be a biologist, and the two bumped into each other at the library. They struck up a conversation and were firm friends before the hour was out. They started spending more and more time together, and slowly but surely, the two fell in love. Gail was the best thing that ever happened to Quail, and the two graduated with several degrees on Q's part. The young pair decided to move in with each other, and they bought an apartment in Silverbay. Q immediately went into inventing and made her first patent two months after she had moved in. Things were looking up- Q even revealed her superpowers to her girlfriend. However, one day, Quail was going down the stairs to get to the lobby, as the elevator was out, and she fell asleep at the top of the landing. She fell down the tall flight of stairs and woke up again to Gail hovering over her worriedly, ambulance lights blaring and no feeling in her hind legs. It turned out that the fall had damaged her spinal cord, paralyzing her hind legs forever. She was upsets, extremely so, but Gail was there to help her through it, and within two years Quail had gotten used to her new wheelchair and was hearing back to her work. Whilst Q was making money with her inventions, Gail too was excelling in her field. She became a prodigy in the field of microbiology and was developing vaccines that could save thousands of lives- but not her own. Quail proposed to her five years after they met, and Gail joyfully accepted. However, neither of them knew that a mere two months later, Gail would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She fought the illness for a whole year and a half, with her agitated fiancée constantly attempting to build or design something that could save her lover. Nothing worked. The two got married in Gail's hospital room a year and a month after the proposal. Quail visited every single day without fail, bringing her books and gifts, and at home, her mother took care of her distraught daughter. Quail was there when Gail died, a sunny June afternoon. She watched Gail's breaths slow and finally stop, saw her when her heart stopped beating. Q screamed. As the nurses and doctors ran in, pulling the sobbing and screeching dragoness away from her wife, the lights began to explode, one by one. The computers in the nearby rooms shorted out, equipment went haywire, all of the phones rang unendingly, all of it mixing with Quail's screams of grief and the ceaseless long beep of Gail's heart monitor. She was heartbroken. Quail seceded into her apartment, barely moving from her bed, the only time she ever emerged being at Gail's funeral. Even then, she was quiet and still, sitting on her wheelchair, her mother by her side. Eventually, the pain of Gail's loss began to lessen, although it never disappeared entirely. She went back to inventing, putting out patents. Her works began to drift towards the medical side, with many experimental devices seeking to cure or help cancer sufferers. She also started to make robots, small insectoid ones at first, then bigger and bigger as time went on. What she didn't know was that she was already being tracked by R. E. V. O. L. T., ever since the incident at the hospital, and one day a disastrous event with a user of her products and her newly-made robotic dog, along with the lights and cars of half the street, made her be approached by the organization. She was asked to be part of a team they were making out of dragons with strange and unnatural powers, and seeking the chance to get a new lease on life, Q accepted. The beginnings of the Chasten weren't very busy, and Quail decided to make some lifestyle changes. She went back to college and got a teaching degree before the year was out, and bought a manor house in the thick forests of the rainforest. There, she set up her school, the Gail Hondua School for Gifted Dragonets. She seeks out those with special abilities like her, and teachers them how to use their powers for good. R. E. V. O. L. T. saw the use of this and they often send the younger superdragon members to her, to keep them all safe. Currently, Professor Quail is at her school, an old part of the Chasten helping to save the world while she still can. Trivia Character Development * Quail was based heavily off of Professor Xavier from X-Men and one of Rainbow's characters, Q. * The original Q was a psychopathic AviWing trapped in a coma, who had some extraordinary mental powers. * Professor Q's powers were originally supposed to be very much along the lines of Professor X's, but those were prohibited. They were then going to be akin to Magneto's, until they were changed to technopathy. In-Universe * Quail's favorite food is summer strawberries. * Her IQ is a secret, but some rumor that it is above 300 on the scale. * She was one of the first members, chronologically, of the Chasten. * She is also one of the oldest members. * Q often takes young, unsure superdragons under her wing, schooling them as best she can. * The only dragon who has ever seen Q's array of scars was her late wife, Gail. * Her robot dog is named Laika. * After the death of her wife, Quail has sworn to never fall in love again.